Current binder materials for composites, cermets or hard metals fabricated with various ceramic particles such as borides, carbides, nitrides, or oxides are primarily iron, cobalt, or nickel. While iron is inexpensive and readily available, its melting point is high, requiring high processing temperatures. Also, while iron does not react with TiB.sub.2, it reacts with ZrB.sub.2 to form tetragonal Fe.sub.2 B and can thus not be used as a binder for ZrB.sub.2. Alloys based on cobalt or nickel are more expensive than iron aluminides and cobalt and nickel alloys suffer from toxicity problems.
There is a need to provide a metal matrix composite which is an improvement over the above metal matrix composites.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,915,903 to Brupbacher et al and U.S. Pat. No. 5,093,148 to Christodoulou et al both discuss a metal matrix containing a second phase of particles. Both discuss that the intermetallic matrix may comprise a wide variety of intermetallic materials, with particular emphasis drawn to the aluminides and silicides and that Exemplary intermetallics include Ti.sub.3 Al, TiAl, TiAl.sub.3, Ni.sub.3 Al, NiAl, Nb.sub.3 Al, NbAl.sub.3, Co.sub.3 Al, Zr.sub.3 Al, Fe.sub.3 Al, Ta.sub.2 Al, TaAl.sub.3, Ti.sub.5 Si.sub.3, Nb.sub.5 Si.sub.3, Cr.sub.3 Si, CoSi.sub.2 and Cr.sub.2 No. Both discuss that the second phase particulate materials may comprise ceramics, such as borides, carbides, nitrides, oxides, silicides or sulfides, or may comprise an intermetallic other than the matrix intermetallic and that exemplary second phase particulates include TiB.sub.2, ZrB.sub.2, HfB.sub.2, VB.sub.2, NbB.sub.2, TaB.sub.2, MoB.sub.2, TiC, ArC, HfC, VC, NbC, TaC, WC, TiN, Ti.sub.5 Si.sub.3, Nb.sub.5 Si.sub.3, ZrSi.sub.2, MoSi.sub.2, and MoS.sub.2.